The Gay Marriage Act will help reduce the number of suicide attempts by
teenagers struggling to come to terms with their sexuality

Suicide attempts are a common presentation in A&E departments. I’ve worked in casualty, on and off, for years and seen countless people who’ve tried to kill themselves. But a while ago, I spent six months in A&E dealing specifically with children who had attempted suicide or self-harm.

There is something particularly chilling about children who have tried to kill themselves. What could provoke a child into such an extreme and destructive action is incomprehensible to most people. Yet it happens. Each year, 25,000 children are admitted to hospital due to the severity of self-inflicted injuries. And, of course, there are some that never make it to hospital, because they succeed.

What astonished me was the number of teenagers I saw who had tried to kill themselves or harmed themselves because of their sexuality. It seemed shocking that, in the 21st century, teenagers still experienced such conflict and grief because they were gay that they felt the only option was to end their lives. Yet last week the House of Commons and House of Lords did something that, in a small but not insignificant way, will help to tackle this: they made the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill law.

While there have been tremendous strides in equality for gay people in recent years, the fact that their love was not legally considered to be on an equal standing with straight people only served to reinforce a sense of alienation.

Although civil partnerships were a step in the right direction, their very nature, of not being officially termed “marriage”, only served to compound the division. It was like the days of apartheid, when black people were told to be satisfied with the fact that they could still ride on the bus, they just had to sit at the back. The institutional division was corrosive and fuelled the sense of alienation and abandonment that so many gay teenagers have spoken to me about.

It is incomprehensible to those who have not struggled with their sexuality to understand the impact that division can cause; the sense that, for some reason, your feelings are not as valid or as desirable as those experienced by straight people. For those who are just coming to terms with their feelings, this is a painful and agonising thing to be confronted with. It creates an environment that implicitly sanctions ridicule and persecution.

Studies have shown that over half of all students subjected to homophobic bullying admit to having considered killing themselves, and about 20 per cent have attempted it, meaning that gay youngsters are three times more likely to have made a serious attempt on their lives than teenagers generally.

Further research, conducted by Stonewall, has shown that two-thirds of gay pupils experience homophobic bullying, rising to 75 per cent in faith schools.

Children take their cues from adults: the fact that homophobia in the classroom exists is a result of children identifying that adults view gay people as different. Equal marriage is a direct challenge to this; a clear communication that gay love is no different in terms of meaning or importance than straight love. For me, equal marriage isn’t just an issue about equality, but about public health. All the evidence supports marriage as an institution that confers health benefits, more so than simply being partnered. But, more importantly, with the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, the last major area of institutional division has been removed for gay people.

Gay youngsters growing up now will become adults in a country that formally recognises their feelings and relationships as the same as their straight friends and classmates. It is an end to division and difference. It will gradually, slowly, help to build a society in which homophobia is as frowned upon as racism is now.

I always knew I was gay but the enormity of it struck me when I was 14. The thought horrified me. Every evening after school, before my parents came back from work, I would go home and lock myself in the bathroom and allow myself quietly to cry for exactly one hour. I wanted to feel normal; to be able to have the same home life as my parents, the same prospects and hopes as all my friends.

One day, after doing this for six months, I realised that crying hadn’t changed anything. So, as I sat on the side of the bath, I calmly decided that I could either kill myself or accept that I was gay and get on with my life. I chose the latter.

On behalf of my 14-year-old self and all those other teenagers who have been in the same situation, I’d like to thank everyone who voted for equal marriage.

Now’s the chance for concerned carers and patients to reshape the NHS

The launch last week of a raft of changes to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is very welcome. As I wrote on these pages a few weeks ago, the CQC badly needs improving, and the planned changes seem to address many of the concerns. The introduction of “Ofsted”-style ratings will, the CQC claim, ensure that hospitals are scrutinised from “top to bottom”.

But in an inspired move, the newly appointed chief inspector of hospitals, Prof Sir Mike Richards, has said he is attempting to recruit hundreds of hospital patients and their carers to act as inspectors. This is exactly what the doctor ordered to get the ailing NHS back into rum health.

It’s a brilliant idea and will ensure that the needs and values of those that use the health service, and have an active interest in ensuring that it upholds excellent standards of care, are at the heart of the inspection process.

Over the years, many people have written to me about their experiences of the NHS, many voicing concerns about standards. More recently, others have written to me about their lack of faith in the CQC.

I’m always struck by how thoughtful, intelligent and articulate the people who write to me are, and to them I say: this is your opportunity to make a difference. You’re precisely the type of people who should be applying for these positions. Your CQC needs you.

Don’t diet, just exercise

A piece of research published last week exposed a strange anomaly in our attitudes towards weight loss and healthy living. According to the study, Britain is among the least active nations of Europe, with only one in five of us playing a sport regularly.

Yet the study also showed that as a nation we are the most obsessed with diets, with nearly 20 per cent of us having been on one in the past six months. In Germany, 8 per cent have been on a diet.

It is ironic that one of the fattest nations with the lowest rates of exercise is so obsessed about dieting. The point is that there is more to tackling obesity than diets. The latest craze to sweep the UK is the 5:2 diet, whose fans include Gwyneth Paltrow and Beyoncé. It actually has some sound scientific evidence behind it, but I’m not convinced it will be our salvation.

If only we could focus all the energy we expend obsessing over fad diets on doing regular exercise, perhaps we wouldn’t have a obesity epidemic at all.

Max Pemberton’s book, 'The Doctor Will See You Now’ is published by Hodder. To order a copy, call Telegraph Books on 0844 871 1515